


Where the Wild Things Are

by Birdpeople (DeusExMachina)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:06:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusExMachina/pseuds/Birdpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You left this in the woods.” Derek Hale held out a red hoodie. It was definitely Stiles’, he recognized it.</p><p>“No I didn’t,” he said, taking it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Wild Things Are

All these animals in the forest, shifting bodies, glinting eyes, the tail-ends of smirks. And Stiles was their king.

 

He raised his arms in mock-celebration as they circled him, nearer and nearer, licking his bare feet, snagging his clothes with their teeth. _Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE don’t go! We’ll eat you up, we love you so!_

Stile woke with a start, heart pounding. It was a moment before he remembered where he was; in bed, the streetlight outside sliding pale knives through the gap between shade and wall.

 

He got up and padded downstairs, easing his weight across the boards that creaked. As he stood at the sink with a glass of water, he looked out at the backyard. Near the end, it vanished into darkness, and if he squinted, he could almost pretend that the darkness was shifting like the many reaching arms of trees from the black, black forest. He shivered, imagining dewey grass under his feet instead of tile. It was warm in the house, and stifling. He wanted to be outside.

 

He went back to bed, throwing open the window before sliding between the sheets. He watched the window shade billow like a galleon’s sail, rising, falling, and fell back asleep wondering if he should wave back.

 

\---

 

“You look like crap,” was Scott’s first comment the next day.

 

“And you look dashing as ever. How dare you.”

 

“Have you been sleeping?”

 

Stiles yawned so widely his jaw cracked. “Yes.”

 

“ _Stiles_.”

 

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, Scotty.”

 

\---

 

At school Stiles was invisible. He passed invisibly through the halls, drifted into someone because he assumed he was intangible, and ended up invisibly collecting his books from the floor, head down. It was only when a hand met his did he look up, into another pair of invisible eyes.

 

The kid flickered into Stiles’ world as everyone else faded still further.

 

“Hi,” the kid said in a colorless voice. “I’m Boyd.”

 

\---

 

“So I met someone today.”

 

Scott played with his school lunch, sneaking glances at his phone. “Oh yeah? Who?”

 

“His name is Boyd.”

 

“Who?”

 

“You don’t know him.”

 

\---

 

Stiles kicked his blanket onto the floor. Too hot, too close.

 

He sat up. Maybe if he just stood outside for a minute?

 

On the front step the yellow streetlight washed everything out, making it all dull, and by contrast, making the ends of the street seem blacker, impenetrable.

 

He went back inside.

 

\---

 

Stiles’ eyes widened. “That’s Derek Hale,” he hissed to Scott. “The one whose family all burned alive.”

 

Scott and Derek both looked at him. How had Derek heard?

 

“Why do you know that?” Scott whispered.

 

“My dad.” _My dreams._

 

Derek’s eyes glinted.

 

\---

 

Stiles donned a beautiful mask, carved of wood in the likeness of a wolf. He painted vines along his bare arms and chest, the brush tickling. He pulled off his shoes and socks and stepped out into the woods. The shapes were back, their backs silvered by the moon, their teeth molten and dripping, their eyes no longer beetle-black but smoldering holes in their faces.

 

They licked the hands he held out to them, and as they did, the vines along his arms began to shift.

 

He woke up brushing frantically at his skin, but it was bare, no vines to be seen. He fell back against his pillows only to realize that he was hard.

 

\---

 

“Derek Hale,” Stiles breathed. His reflection stared back at him, lips rabid with toothpaste. If he said his name three times, would he appear?

 

Stiles rinsed and spat and continued getting ready for school.

 

\---

 

“You left this in the woods.” Derek Hale held out a red hoodie. It was definitely Stiles’, he recognized it.

 

“No I didn’t,” he said, taking it.

 

\---

 

“I met a girl,” Scott said.

 

“Oh yeah? Who?”

 

“Allison Argent.”

 

“Who?”

 

“You don’t know her.”

 

\---

 

“Something weird is going on,” Stiles said. Boyd nodded, and time stretched like taffy on a hot day.

 

“I know.”

 

“Are we going to be okay?”

 

“You and I are. A few others. That’s all.”

 

Stiles didn’t ask how Boyd knew.

 

\---

 

“Dad?” Stiles asked. He had fallen asleep in the front seat of the car hours ago, and yet they were still driving through the same forest. “Are we lost?”

 

“No, Stiles,” his dad said, leaning forward to see through the windshield. “We’ll be there soon.”

 

“Oh.” Stiles looked at the clock. Only ten minutes had passed since he dozed off.

 

\---

 

The animals presented him with a crown. They fitted it over his head and then they bowed to him. He looked down the line and met each of their many, many eyes without blinking. They cowered and moaned and he grinned with sharp, silver teeth.

 

Stiles blinked and found himself out in his backyard. For real. The grass was wet and blades stuck to his bare feet and legs. The cicadas were deafening.

 

There was no streetlight here, and he stood in the shadow of his childhood home, waiting. What was he waiting for?

 

The darkness was waiting for him to move first, and eventually he did, heading back inside.

 

\---

 

“Derek Hale,” Stiles said, and Derek Hale turned pale gooseberry eyes on him.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“Trespassing,” Stiles said, as if it were obvious.

 

“I mean, what are you doing here now? You’re not supposed to be here until tonight.”

 

Stiles felt his stomach drop and his legs fold up under him. The last thing he saw was Derek sprinting toward him.

 

\---

 

He woke up on a smoky-smelling couch with a blanket tucked around him. There was a patch of moss growing between the cracks of the dirty floorboards.

 

“What the fuck,” he mumbled.

 

Derek glared at him. “I told you, you shouldn’t have come here in the daytime.”

 

“Why not? What’s the difference?” Stiles struggled to sit up. “What the fuck is going on?”

 

Derek shrugged. “I don’t know.”

 

Stiles stared at him, and Derek met his eyes. Stiles did not blink. Derek looked away first.

 

“I don’t know you, Derek Hale.”

 

“Well I know you, Stiles Stilinski.”

 

The words slid down Stiles’ spine like an ice cube on a hot summer’s day. “How?”

 

Derek shrugged. “Everything’s all fucked up around here. Come back tonight.”

 

“Why?”

 

“At night it’s easier to accept the things you don’t believe in. You’re a stubborn asshole in the daytime.”

 

Stiles snorted.

 

\---

 

That night he waited for his dad to be asleep. Then he went and collected Scott and his trusty bat.

 

They snuck out to the woods.

 

Nothing happened except that Stiles received twenty-seven mosquito bites and Scott got one, and the redness had faded by the time they got back to Stiles’ car, anyway.

 

\---

 

Stiles went alone the next night, and found Boyd waiting for him.

 

“Don’t go under the trees,” he whispered. “Every time you go under the trees you start to exist for a while. You can only do it a few times and soon you won’t be able to do it anymore.”

 

But Stiles shook his head. “I have to meet Derek Hale. He says he knows me.”

 

“No one knows you. That’s the way the world works,” but Stiles just shook his head.

 

“That can’t be right.”

 

Under the trees, Stiles’ flashlight was a dim and sickly finger. Eventually he checked the bulb and discovered it was out.

 

That was when he saw Derek Hale, stretched out in the moonlight.

 

He was huge here, the darkness sweeping out from under rocks and behind trees to form his body.

 

His ears were long and he watched Stiles with a bright wolf’s eye. The coarse hair of his coat rose and fell, catching the dim moonlight, and his breath rolled out of him in steamy clouds.

 

But he was wrong, Stiles could tell. His side was riddled with scars, lumpy raised burn tissue, which still looked pink and tender. He whined as Stiles stroked his muzzle.

 

“Now you know me, too.”

 

And Stiles did.

 

\---

 

He went to Derek in the daytime. “You’re a wolf.”

 

Derek glared at Stiles. He was getting good at that. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Is it a curse or something, so you can’t talk about it? It’s okay, I understand. I can break it.”

 

Derek rolled his eyes. “I didn’t take you for an idiot. Guess I was wrong.”

 

Stiles shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.”

 

“I’m not some fucking teen-romance fodder.”

 

“No, you’re a real monster.” Stile clapped a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”

 

“Get out of here.” There was a dangerous note in Derek’s voice.

 

“I’m sor-”

 

“Go!”

 

\---

 

The next time Stiles saw Derek, a year and a day had gone by. Stiles had changed. He was taller, more sure of himself.

 

“I can break the spell.”

 

Derek turned his back on Stiles. Derek hadn’t changed at all. “Leave me alone.”

 

“Bring me the mask.”

 

Derek looked at him sharply. “What mask?”

 

But Stiles stared him in the eyes until Derek had to look away.

 

He came back with a mask and handed it to Stiles.

 

Stiles took it and turned it in his hands. It was older than it had looked in his dreams, and there were vines pained down either side. The paint was peeling.

 

He placed it over his own face, tying it tightly behind his head and looked around.

 

Everything looked clearer, vibrant. He looked at Derek, and saw that Derek was only a man. He looked down at himself and saw that he was a man, too, a real man who existed even when he wasn’t under the trees.

 

He took off the mask and placed it on the ground. One hard stamp, and it shattered into a hundred pieces.

 

Derek was watching him hungrily. He looked real and solid, and the woods continued to shift around Stiles, greener than they had ever been before. There was a wind rising.

 

Derek looked wild all of a sudden, and shapes were moving in around Stiles. He stood very still.

 

 _This isn’t supposed to happen. It’s daytime! Wake up!_ But he was wide-awake for once.

 

The wolves began to approach and lick his hands and still Derek stared him down and Stiles stood helpless, while all around him they chanted, _Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE don’t go, we’ll eat you up, we love you so!_

Stiles looked down and caught the eyes of some of the wolves.

 

Scott. And Boyd.

 

 _Run away!_ Boyd’s eyes pleaded. _Run away!_

But Stiles stood his ground. _You said we would both be okay_.

 

_That was before you changed everything! Derek Hale’s going to eat you alive!_

 

But Stiles was starting to smile. “I am the king of the forest,” he told Derek.

 

“That so?”

 

Stiles nodded, and as he did, he felt his teeth silvering, his nails lengthening. “You’ll have to fight me for the title, Derek Hale, and you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

 

And Derek Hale looked afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> So obviously this took a lot of cues from Where the Wild Things Are, because I was thinking about it, but also from a fairy tale that I think is called The Stone Fox? Where there's a mask that turns someone into a fox? If you know what I'm talking about and remember the name, let me know. '~'


End file.
